In the wake of disaster in Texas, one community is relying on its volunteer fire department, the backbone of the Hill Country, Rachel Monroe reports. But, first, Deborah Treisman, The New Yorker’s fiction editor, answers readers’ questions about writing. Plus:

Since The New Yorker’s founding, the magazine’s Fiction department has sought out stories from celebrated authors and new, emerging talent. Yesterday, on Reddit, our fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, answered users’ questions about reading, writing, and publishing fiction—and about whether there’s a particular quality that separates a “New Yorker story” from everything else. Read some of her responses below, and check out the full Q. & A. on the r/writing subreddit. Questions and answers have been lightly edited and condensed.

What advice would you give to a writer who is afraid to get started or has trouble getting started? I have ideas, but, when I try to put them on paper (or Google Doc), my brain freezes. Are there any writing exercises or techniques you recommend?

It sounds as though you’re expecting yourself to write a perfect first draft. My advice would be to allow yourself to write a very imperfect one, then put it aside for a while, then go back to it and rethink, rewrite, revise. The first draft should allow you to get everything down, and the second should allow you to turn that into a story.

What characteristics make up a “Yeah, that’s a New Yorker story, without a doubt”?

I wish there were an easy answer to that! First of all, we aren’t looking for something called “a New Yorker story.” We’re looking for a story that will affect us, be it through its plot, its language, its humor, its voice, its subtexts, its imagery, or anything else. If we read a story and cannot forget it, that’s a very good sign. That said, it’s good to feel that a story has movement of some kind, that it leaves you in a different place than where you began, that reading it is a living experience. Without those qualities, it’s likely to be more of a sketch than a story.

What does the whole process look like? I know (or think) The New Yorker solicits work from writers, so how much back-and-forth is there until the work is accepted? How much back-and-forth is there after the piece has been accepted, and what sort of comments/feedback come up in that process?

Fiction actually isn’t usually “solicited” as such. In fact, this year’s Fiction Issue was the first time in twenty-seven years here that I did “assign” stories. The concept for the issue—in honor of the magazine’s hundredth anniversary—was to ask contemporary writers to write new stories that were in some way inspired by stories from the archives of the magazine.

The editorial process sometimes involves suggesting revisions and then working with the writer to come up with the strongest possible draft. After that, I do a first edit, in which I try to get to everything substantive I want to suggest or query. The writer goes through those notes and accepts some, rejects some, makes their own changes, and sends it back. Then I’ll do another close read, for smaller line edits and tweaks. After that, the story goes to our copy editors and fact checkers. Art is commissioned for the title page. And, whenever possible, we ask the writer to read the story for our Writer’s Voice podcast and do a Q. & A. for our This Week in Fiction section.

How would I, someone who has never been published before, go about getting published in The New Yorker? Simpler: How would I even get my story read?

Getting it read is as easy as sending your story to fiction@newyorker.com!

“Not being able to help people, especially when that’s in your heart, when what you want to do is serve—it kills you,” Lee Pool, the chief of the volunteer fire department in Hunt, Texas, told Rachel Monroe, who spent the past week reporting on the aftermath of the region’s deadly disaster. Pool described his harrowing experience on the night of the floods, when he got stuck while driving after the town’s major highway turned to a swift-moving river and his radio was alive with more sounds of distress than he’d ever heard. “I mean, it’s just constant,” he said. “Just, help, help, help, help.” Read the story »

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